Paula Kirby Click here for Dutch translation
John Cornwell, Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Riposte to The God Delusion
I shall keep this section brief, since I have already posted a review plus further comments about this book elsewhere on this website (Honest Mistakes or Willful Mendacity thread, posts 97, 104, 106 and 111. See also Flagellant's comments on the same thread, post 116 — and, of course, Richard's own comments in the main article on that thread) and will therefore try to avoid repeating myself here. Suffice it to say that I was genuinely shocked when I read this book: not just at the complete lack of an argument, but at the incredibly spiteful, twisted, distorted nature of the accusations being made. Now, Richard Dawkins has been accused by the apologists of distorting what they believe, so maybe it's only fair to expect the same in return? But no — in Cornwell's case, it isn't even a distortion of Dawkins' argument: it's distortion for the purpose of sheer, personal abuse.
Cornwell (or rather, Cornwell in the guise of Dawkins' guardian angel — he doesn't even have the moral fibre to make his attack in person) tries at every opportunity to make Dawkins appear irredeemably narcissistic. Take this as an example: "I was glad that you could quote the magnificent encomium [Cornwell likes this word and uses it a lot, with a sneer that's audible despite the written medium] of the late Douglas Adams [�] for your outspoken courage which, you relate, you 'never tire of sharing' with others." A quick look at TGD will show — in case you were in any doubt — that what Dawkins 'never tires of sharing' is Adams' impromptu speech challenging the notion that religious faith should be protected by a wall of respect. Adams does indeed refer to Richard Dawkins — but only in passing, and the word "courage" is neither used nor implied, nor would it even fit into the context.
This is spite, pure and simple. As are Cornwell's repeated snide remarks about Dawkins' alleged tendency to quote himself rather than others in support of his comments: "You quote yourself (who else?) �" being just one example. So insistently does Cornwell make this point that I was specifically on the look-out for instances of such behaviour on Dawkins' part when I recently re-read TGD. Did I find them? No. In fact, almost every one of the 420 pages of the paperback edition contains references to other authors, with very few of them referencing Dawkins' other works. The "Books cited or recommended" section at the back refers to 169 books, of which 7 are by Richard Dawkins. As narcissism goes, it probably compares favourably with masquerading as an angel.
This was the first of the four books that I read and the first time I'd encountered the sustained allegation that atheism must lead to a repeat of the atrocities carried out by Hitler and Stalin, and I was absolutely appalled at the sheer, horrific, cynical exploitation of human misery in order to gain a cheap (and dishonest) point. Three flea books further on I'm now a seasoned campaigner: not one of them misses this particular trick, though Wilson only mentions it in passing. I have therefore dealt with it as a special topic above.
In many ways I found Cornwell's book the most disturbing of the four: at times he sounds almost literally mad. And never more so than when he allows his utter paranoia to shine through, as here: "I could not help noting that some of your most ardent followers have already characterised religion as a sort of viral infection, an HIV of the mind, requiring drastic final solutions — quarantine, liquidation." Where on earth does he get such ridiculous assertions from? (This interpretation of atheists viewing religion as a virus that must be stamped out is another theme that emerges with tedious predictability in all four books — for the record, the actual assertion made by Dawkins is that religious ideas spread in the same way that viruses do. At no point does he mention or even hint at quarantine, liquidation, extermination or any of the other exotic fantasies that lurk in these believers' fevered imaginations.)
Special topic: Paranoia
It is simply impossible to read these four backs back-to-back and not be struck by the extraordinary degree of paranoia that is apparent in them. Their authors seem determined to see themselves as persecuted and to predict worse persecutions in the future. And this characteristic is not limited to the "fleas": only recently one of the more evangelical Christians on this site declared his conviction that he would face imprisonment for his Christian beliefs in his lifetime. Since, whatever these fears are based on, it's not the actual content of TGD or the intentions of any atheist I know of, where do they come from and why have they taken such a hold of believers' brains?
I would argue that it is pure wishful thinking. This may sound unlikely: why should anyone wish to be persecuted? But when we recall the persecution that the early Christians did suffer — incarceration, public floggings, other forms of torture, being ripped apart by lions or slowly roasted over hot coals (and bearing in mind that history teems with examples of Christians inflicting similar torments on others whose beliefs did not take precisely the approved form) — it becomes apparent that the mockery and candid scepticism that is the worst they face in Western societies today are a feeble trial indeed. Would-be disciples in the 21st century can be forgiven for feeling slightly inadequate when compared with their more heroic predecessors.
It is not just the Koran that welcomes martyrs: the Bible, too, makes it clear that being persecuted is part of the job description for any serious Christian. Consider these quotes:
"Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matthew 5: 10-12)
"Therefore, among God's churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring." (2 Thessalonians, 1:4)
"You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, suffering — what kind of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived."
(2 Timothy 3: 10-13)
A Christian's instructions are clear. Suffer for your faith! Be persecuted! If you're not being persecuted, you're just not trying hard enough! But oh dear: how hard that is when they are surrounded by people who tolerate their belief, even if they don't actually approve of it. There is only one solution, and that is to make the very moderate criticism that they're subjected to sound like the most vicious of persecution. Write of the desire to ban religion, to wipe it out, annihilate it, exterminate it. Claim that those who practise it will be imprisoned, disenfranchised, physically assaulted. That their children will be forcibly removed from them. Recreate the horrors of the Holocaust and the gulags in believers' imaginations.
How else, in a liberal democracy, are they to stand any chance of claiming the rewards of the persecuted?
Anyone reading Cornwell's book having first read TGD must surely conclude that he has quite deliberately twisted and distorted everything Dawkins has written in it. How else to account for claims such as the following: "You have issued a glowing promise of ultimate happiness, if only your readers will trust in you" or "[Y]ou are insistent that all religious believers are by definition fundamentalists and that even the mildest, most tolerant form of faith leads inexorably to the suicide bomber". What scurrilous nonsense! What Dawkins actually writes is that "even mild and moderate religion helps to provide the climate of faith in which extremism naturally flourishes" and "The teachings of 'moderate' religion, though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism" and "If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers." Is it really possible for an educated, honest mind to sincerely mistake the one for the other?
As for Cornwell's argument in support of the existence of God � well, maybe he has another book due out soon in which he covers that one. He certainly doesn't in Darwin's Angel. At one point he writes, "The word 'god' expresses a diversity of meanings, depending on cultural, philosophical, ethnic, and historical background" — and that's about as specific as he gets. Hardly surprising, maybe, if the following is true: "When a person thinks about a god, or God, every conception of that idea, special to that person, comes as a new act of imagination, or memory, rather than an item of received and mutant information." Vagueness is clearly a virtue in Cornwell's mind: elsewhere he writes, "For religious believers, moreover, it is not their belief in God, but God, that makes them good: God's presence, whose goodness tames the egoism, vanity, and violence of the human heart." Don't bother asking for evidence for this assertion: it isn't forthcoming.
"Imagination" is a word that figures very prominently in this book: indeed, I am left with the impression that Cornwell is suggesting that our imaginations are themselves evidence of the reality of God - but I may be mistaken on that: the whole book is such a swirl of meaningless rhetoric that it's perfectly possible I've misinterpreted what he really is trying to say. No mistaking the personal animosity to Richard Dawkins, though: "You are also disturbed by the dimension of imagination, aren't you? It's so close to art, music, poetry - stuff that's made up rather than facts that can be reducible to physics, chemistry and biology". Quite apart from the clunkiness of the language ("can be reducible"?), this is a frankly astonishing accusation to level at the author of Unweaving the Rainbow!
All in all, even on re-visiting the book to refresh my memory of it before writing this, I still stand by my original assessment of it: with angels like these, who needs demons?
Andrew Wilson, Deluded by Dawkins? A Christian Response to The God Delusion
Andrew Wilson was an entirely unknown name to me prior to reading his book, but a Google search led me to the following comment on the blog site of a "reformed charismatic, by God's awesome grace" : "Andrew Wilson of King's Eastbourne has written a stunning deconstruction of Dawkins' The God Delusion, it's long but definately (sic) worth reading. It's also funny. Which helps."
Well, it's not that long, actually: 112 pages all told, which includes a preface that doesn't start till page 6, plus a full page given over to a single Bible quotation between each and every chapter. Which leaves just 94 pages for his actual argument. Add to that the fact that the font size is unusually large and unusually generously spaced out; and that nearly every page contains rather copious footnotes (sometimes taking up more than half the page in question, and very often simply consisting of Bible references), and you begin to see that this is a very insubstantial book indeed. Is it, however, a "stunning deconstruction of Dawkins' The God Delusion"?
Wilson establishes his credentials as a denouncer of Dawkins from the very first pages, where he almost bursts a blood vessel in his eagerness to deploy words like "arrogant", "strident", "belligerence", "fundamentalist", "overconfident", "bluster" and so on. His familiarity with Dawkins' oeuvre would appear to be limited to his book titles — which wouldn't of itself be an issue but for the fact that he claims, "Richard Dawkins has spent much of his career attacking belief in God, particularly the Christian God. He has written books about it". Has he, indeed? I shall be interested to read them. (My hunch is that Wilson has seen the title "A Devil's Chaplain" and has drawn his own — incorrect — conclusions about its content.)
Wilson spends a lot of time arguing that many of Dawkins' points in TGD are irrelevant to the central question of whether there is a God or not. This may be technically correct (for instance, the existence or otherwise of religious scientists is not of itself proof either for or against God), but overlooks the fact that Dawkins is simply responding here to arguments regularly used by theists. If theists insist on trying to claim Einstein as one of their own and implying that belief in God is therefore scientifically credible, then that has to be countered and can't be written off as irrelevant.
The reformed charismatic reviewer quoted above says that Wilson's book is funny, and I have to confess that I did find some humour in it, though surely of the unintended kind. Wilson argues that there is a killer argument that absolutely proves the truth of Christianity, and he complains that Dawkins doesn't even discuss it properly in TGD. My curiosity was, naturally enough, aroused by this point, and I read on eagerly: "Most seriously, Dawkins spends the best part of the book either making points that are not directly relevant to the question of whether or not there is a god or attacking bad reasons to believe that there is, whilst the most definitive argument that Christians have used since AD30, the resurrection of Jesus, is not even discussed." This, claims Wilson, "is damaging to Dawkins' argument, perhaps fatally so." "Perhaps," he continues, "he is not really prepared to engage with the worldview-challenging events of Easter, save to say that they cannot have happened because dead people can't rise. If so, his positioning is just as unquestioning, just as fundamentalist, as that of many of the individuals he has written his book to refute."
Well, I did tell you it was funny.
In chapter 2, Wilson has assembled a table summarising the arguments of TGD and adding his own brief comment to each, and assigning it to a category: A (Agree), I (irrelevant), U (Unsubstantiated), or D (Disagree). Here are a few examples from it:
And so it goes on. When I first read this table, I assumed it must be a kind of Executive Summary, to be followed up with more in-depth analysis later in the book — but I was wrong! This is it. The only issues that Wilson goes into in any detail later are the very few (he gets them down to four) questions which he accepts as relevant and where he disagrees with Dawkins.
Note that by dismissing so much in the table above, he is excused the trouble of having to deal with the issues of — for example — atrocities carried out by the religious, the fact that morality has been shown to be no less lively in non-religious people than in believers, the cosmological arguments against God and so on and so forth. Dawkins' argument about the changing moral zeitgeist — which is important because it makes so much of the behaviour described in the Old Testament as commanded by God repulsive to us, and because it makes the central Christian notion of atonement through blood sacrifice repugnant — is dismissed with a cavalier "Yes (so what?)"
Wilson's fundamental premise here is mistaken. He argues as though The God Delusion were only about one delusion, whereas in reality it is about two: firstly, the delusion of believing that God exists, and secondly the delusion of thinking that belief in God is a good thing in itself. Wilson may not wish to engage with the second of those delusions, but to claim he knows better than Dawkins what Dawkins himself was trying to achieve with his own book is a bit rich.
Be that as its may, the four points that Wilson deigns to engage with are these: anti-supernaturalism, logic, scripture, and improbability. I'll deal with each of them briefly.
Anti-supernaturalism
Wilson takes issue with the atheist worldview, saying our assumption that the natural world that we perceive with our physical senses is all there is "simply cannot be given unquestionable status". He believes in miracles, both those reported in the Bible, and those he claims to have witnessed in his own church. At one point he sounds surprisingly Cornwell-esque when he writes: "The Christian understanding of a miracle is as something which enables creation to be more fully itself, restoring the created order and redeeming it from the effects of sin." Hopefully that's clarified the question for all of us.
He goes on to list 3 "miracles" that he claims to have personally witnessed in a single month: a healed wrist, a healed shoulder, and healed eyesight — all healed instantaneously, in front of witnesses, as a result of prayer. Maybe I am about to fall into the trap of circularity that Wilson accuses atheists of, but I have no difficulty in saying that I absolutely do not believe in these alleged miracles. Not that I suspect him of lying: I don't doubt for a moment that he is convinced of the veracity of his claims. But no, I don't believe miracles happen, and therefore I don't believe that these miracles happened. My interpretation would be entirely psychological: we know now beyond a doubt that the brain plays an enormous role in the physical health of the body: changing what the brain believes about its state of health is often enough to induce either disease or cure. I visited the website of Wilson's church (King's Church, Eastbourne) and, once I'd recovered from seeing a photo of him and realising he can't be older than about 23 (actually, that explains a lot), I couldn't help noticing that the photo of the congregation has them all standing with hands held aloft in charismatic adulation. (Have I just been reading too much David Robertson, or does anyone else find themselves irresistibly reminded of the Nazi salute when they see a crowd of Christians with one arm raised diagonally above the head?) My point is that this photo suggests an intense, emotional atmosphere, one in which people are actively expecting healing to occur: the very atmosphere, in fact, that would lead the brain to become convinced that healing had occurred, and hence to take care of it itself. Whether it was the cure or the original problem — or both — that had its origins in psychology hardly matters.
Special topic: Miracles
So why am I so adamant that these were no miracles in Wilson's sense? Well, imagine if they were. It would mean that God had intervened to heal certain individuals on request. That would mean that he was ABLE to heal people on request. And presumably that he was able to heal them even without such a request. Which would then inevitably mean that, in all the other cases of other injured wrists, painful shoulders or defective eyesight in the world — problems causing pain, limited mobility, restricted freedom, suffering, maybe depression, etc — he was simply choosing not to heal them: choosing to let people continue having their experience of life diminished because he chose not to exercise his healing power. Any human who had it in their power to reduce or remove suffering but chose not to do so would be rightly accused of callousness, lack of humanity, sociopathy even. They would be the sort of person you would not choose to spend time with. The same must apply to any god who behaved in the same way.
And what trivial causes of suffering this omnipotent God chooses to show his power on: a painful wrist, a stiff shoulder, migraines. Is there no one dying of cancer who might have been given priority access to this miraculous healing power? No child about to be orphaned by AIDS? No couples left devastated by multiple miscarriages? No one trapped by fire and praying in vain for help to arrive in time? No tortured prisoner whimpering in pain? No young girl screaming in agony as her genitals are sliced off in the name of her parents' god? Shame on you, Andrew Wilson — and shame on your party-trick god.
Furthermore, Wilson's definition of a miracle (as given above) would mean that these injuries/defects had arisen as a result of sin (original sin, presumably, rather than the individuals' sin, though he doesn't specify). Again, such a notion is inherently repugnant and incompatible with any system of justice or morality that any decent human being would recognise as such.
A god who behaved in this capricious and callous way would be utterly contemptible.
Logic
Wilson devotes all of two pages to this chapter! In it he announces two responses to Dawkins' argument that God cannot be both omniscient AND omnipotent since the two are mutually incompatible: firstly, that logicians have been aware of this issue for thousands of years (he cites the books of Numbers and 1 Samuel to ram his point home). You may feel, as I do, that this was rather a needless exertion, since it is no part of Dawkins' argument that the objection is a new one.
Wilson's second response is to quote C S Lewis (who else?), saying "You may attribute miracles to him but not nonsense." Wilson seems to feel that Lewis hasn't made the point quite well enough, for he adds: "Can God do things which are logically impossible? No. Can he do things which he did not know he was going to do? No. Can he stop being good, or holy, or glorious? No. But to infer from these things that God is not all-powerful, or (more fatuously) that God is impossible, is to build theology upon a rather silly and pedantic understanding of the word "omnipotent".
Well, such claims are possible when you have nothing to base your description of an entity on: you are free to add words, remove words, change the meaning of words to your heart's content. Let us not forget that there isn't a theologian alive or dead who has ever demonstrated convincingly that God exists at all: yet they do not scruple to pile adjective upon adjective upon this entirely unproven being. They can claim anything they like — no one can prove them wrong. If they choose to believe that "omnipotent" doesn't actually mean "omnipotent", there's no reality-check to stop them. This is Alice through the Looking Glass language, and Alice through the Looking Glass logic.
Scripture
This is Wilson's longest chapter, which is hardly surprising, given what he has revealed of himself so far. He doesn't give a bibliography, but I can't help feeling that Lee Strobel has been done out of a credit here — this chapter has Strobel's book The Case for Christ stamped all over it. The only point that is clearly Wilson's own is his disagreement with Dawkins' rather generous (I thought) addition to Lewis's famous "mad, bad or God" claim about Jesus, arguing that if Jesus had genuinely been mistaken (as suggested by Dawkins), then that would be covered by "mad". OK. So be it.
Wilson goes on to argue for the historical reliability of the Gospels, rather irrelevantly pointing out that the bits picked on by Dawkins in exposing their unreliability do not form the basis of much recent Christian preaching anyway. This rather overlooks the fact that, if parts of the Gospels are not entirely reliable, then their reliability when it comes to even less credible stories is inevitably undermined: just ask any barrister who has ever demolished the credibility of a witness in order to secure his client's acquittal.
Wilson sees the New Testament as lending support to belief in God "in that (a) it is a compilation of 27 separate documents from various authors throughout the first century of Christian belief, which both argue for and depend on the historical fact of Jesus' resurrection, and (b) these documents depict the various ways in which the early disciples came to terms with that had happened, including their gradual realisation that Jesus was God himself. "
Well, if we are to accept the self-referential as unimpeachable evidence, then we must also accept that the Koran is proof that Mohammed is God's final and perfect messenger.
Wilson reckons his case for the literal truth of the resurrection is strengthened by the fact that "we have no such documents arguing the opposite" - which conjures up the rather beguiling image of the Jerusalem Times carrying the front page headline "Crucified man stays dead" and a newspaper vendor calling excitedly, "Read all about it."
He further reckons that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 gave the lie to Dawkins' argument that the scriptures we have today are inaccurate copies of the originals and therefore not reliable. What Wilson fails to acknowledge, however, is the decades-long time lag between the alleged events and their being written down at all. The very earliest of Paul's letters cannot have been written less than 20 years after the alleged resurrection, and may well have been later still. This is more than long enough for oral transmission to have distorted the tale beyond all recognition and for the rumour of resurrection to have taken hold of credulous people's minds. Paul never met Jesus. (No, Andrew Wilson, an alleged supernatural encounter that could be explained with more credibility by an epileptic seizure doesn't count.) Therefore not even the earliest of the New Testament accounts was based on first hand experience of the events described as occurring in the life of Jesus.
There follow several pages of "Courtier's Reply", which I shan't go into, culminating in the rather extraordinary claim that "the historical evidence, both inside and outside the Bible, points to the fact that Jesus rose from the dead." I can't wait to hear the evidence from outside the Bible, but unfortunately I shall have to, since Wilson forgets to include it.
Lee Strobel is in full evidence again in the treatment of the empty tomb (apparently "there is only one plausible explanation of the empty tomb, let alone the numerous resurrection appearances we know about. And this means that the resurrection actually happened") and the apparently inexplicable willingness of the disciples to be persecuted, tortured and murdered for proclaiming something that they knew to be untrue.
On the first issue, Wilson perhaps needs to go and remind himself what "plausible" actually means; and on the second, psychology spoils his story again. We don't know that the resurrection happened, and we don't know that the resurrection appearances happened. We only know that the New Testament claims that they did. Of course, the chances that they really did are miniscule indeed, not to say non-existent. But how difficult would it be for an impressionable and hysterical young person — whether one of the various women cited in the Gospels as the first to encounter the risen Jesus or one of the disciples — to imagine, in their fevered, grief-stricken and confused state, that this man whose charisma had so dominated their lives in the previous three years and who had struck them as being so other-worldly and convinced them that he was indeed the Messiah — how difficult would it be for a mind thus prepared to imagine that it had seen the resurrected Jesus? And then to convey that conviction to the brethren, whose minds had also been prepared in the same way?
© www.bandoli.no
The brain is a powerful organ, as we have already seen, and would have no difficulty convincing itself of the truth of the image it had created. Remember, too, that in the ancient world, resurrection was something of a cliché in denoting heroes and other special people — and Jesus had struck them as very special indeed. Don't forget that the stories about the discovery of the empty tomb, and Jesus's post-death appearances to the disciples weren't written down for decades: more than enough time for them to have acquired a life of their own.
This is pure speculation, of course — but we have witnessed for ourselves (too often to tragic effect) the effects of a charismatic leader on his all-too gullible followers. The Andrew Wilsons and David Robertsons of this world won't be remotely swayed by this suggestion: but they cannot argue that the resurrection is the only possible, or even the most plausible, explanation for the events following the crucifixion.
Improbability
There is very little in this final chapter that hasn't been covered in dealing with David Robertson's book, so I won't repeat those arguments here.
Wilson is clearly not a fan of evolution (that won't come as a surprise to anyone) and does his best to argue against natural selection in a section headed "Irreducible complexity and the illusion of design", but it is clear that he has simply raided a creationist textbook or website for his argument here, for he eagerly declares the bombardier beetle as his "personal favourite" example of complexity which would not sit comfortably with Darwinian explanations. Given that none of the other books here reviewed approach this subject, I will quote Wilson's footnote in full:
"The bombardier beetle has a very unusual defence mechanism. It has tubes in its tail which store two different chemicals, and these chemicals, when mixed together, cause an explosion. It also has a third substance, an inhibitor, which prevents any explosion from taking place until the chemicals enter a chamber in its rear; at this point an enzyme is added and an explosion takes places, firing a 100 degrees C jet out of its backside at its enemies, and propelling itself several feet away. It is not clear how natural selection, which requires each step to be advantageous, could ever have produced a bombardier beetle that did not immediately blow itself to smithereens."
Funnily enough, 2 footnotes further up, Wilson has made reference to one of Dawkins' other books, The Blind Watchmaker. Sadly, he evidently hadn't actually read it for, if he had, he would have found the following in response to a slightly more detailed version of Wilson's rendering above:
"The statement that 'these two chemicals, when mixed together, literally explode' is, quite simply, false, although it is regularly repeated throughout creationist literature. It is true that [the bombardier beetle] squirts a scaldingly hot mixture of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone at enemies. But hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone don't react violently together unless a catalyst is added. This is what the bombardier beetle does. As for the evolutionary precursors of the system, both hydrogen peroxide and various kinds of quinones are used for other purposes in body chemistry. The bombardier beetle's ancestors simply pressed into different service chemicals that already happened to be around. That's often how evolution works."
Wilson's final assault is on the anthropic principle and cosmological improbability. He has another go at Dawkins' insistence that any creator god must have evolved from something less complex, whining that his God is eternal and so exempt from this argument. He goes on to demonstrate a less than subtle grasp of the anthropic principle, and then to flag up the "astronomically unlikely" chances of life originating by chance and to claim that Dawkins somehow tries to muddy the waters so as to downplay the improbability.
A quick glance at the relevant chapters of TGD will show that, far from downplaying the improbabilities involved, Dawkins actually draws attention to them, stating that the improbability of the origin of life was "many orders of magnitude more improbably than most people realize." Wilson quotes various statistics to show that the improbability is greater even than Dawkins suggests — but unfortunately he doesn't cite his references, and we saw from the bombardier beetle example that he becomes slightly excitable in the presence of creationist arguments.
In a sense, however, it doesn't matter: for Dawkins makes the case that, no matter how improbable, life only had to originate ONCE. And that in a universe that, as we have seen, is vast and ancient beyond our capacity to imagine. Wilson's choice of the epithet "astronomically unlikely" is unintentionally apposite: for we are indeed dealing with astronomical scales here, in both the space and time available for life to have emerged. The chances of something inordinately improbable happening within an area of, say, 1000 square miles and within a timeframe of, say 100 years, are vastly less than the chances of something inordinately improbable happening somewhere in an area the size of our universe and sometime within a timeframe of nearly 14 billion years. It's understandable that the human brain should struggle to take this in — but what is becoming clearer and clearer with every new discovery is that to reject the insights of the science of cosmology on the basis of human notions of logic is to be very narrow-minded and parochial indeed.
In his conclusion, Wilson disagrees with Robertson, and argues that TGD is "stimulating, well written, amusing and combative" and "worth taking seriously". No exhortations to the reader here not to bother reading it for herself! After a brief reprise of his main arguments, and the exhortation to Christians to "fight intellectual battles" and present "reasoned argument" in tackling atheists (presumably he's thinking of his reasoned, intellectual argument for the resurrection here?), he suggests that Dawkins "remains an enigma" and, despite his apparent confidence in science to "offer the consolation currently provided by religion" and "his apparent frustration with the idea of an infinite God" - "he may still be questing"! The wellspring of this rather startling comment is an interview given by Richard after publication of TGD in which he said that "[a supernatural intelligent designer] does seem to me to be a worthy idea. Refutable - but nevertheless grand and big enough to be worthy of respect�If there is a God, it's going to be whole lot bigger and whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed."
Strange, how Wilson sees in this reason to suggest that Dawkins may be secretly yearning for God when, on the previous page, he was accusing him of being "just as fundamentalist as the religious fanatics he is seeking to discredit." But then, a page is a long time in Christian apologetics.
Alister McGrath with Joanna Collicutt McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist fundamentalism and the denial of the divine
As I said in my opening remarks, I had been expecting McGrath's book to be the heavyweight among the four, the one most likely to present in-depth and possibly challenging arguments. I could not have been more wrong. Despite McGrath's claim in the introduction that his aim is "a critical engagement with the arguments set out in The God Delusion, its 65 pages (72 if you include the introduction) contain not a single positive argument in defence of Christianity. Not one. The reader gets to the end of it with absolutely NO idea what McGrath's religion is - unless it's hatred of Richard Dawkins. It is, quite simply, 72 pages of snide, distorted, falsified, predictable ad hominem attack all the way. You will have gathered that all the flea books contain elements of this (though Wilson's slightly less than the others) and that in their different ways all have appalled and angered me to one degree or another. McGrath's is without doubt the worst, the most disgraceful, of the lot. For this reason, I cannot review it as such - there is, after all, no argument whatsoever to engage with. I will simply quote some of his comments, so you can see for yourself just how low he is prepared to stoop.
Before embarking on this necessarily ugly and unpleasant journey, however, I must share with you the one bit of pleasure and amusement I did get from this otherwise desperately tedious book: by the time we reach the foot of page 2, McGrath has already informed us no fewer than SIX times that he used to be an atheist! It's on the back cover, the frontispiece, three times in the (7-page) introduction, and by the time it appears for the sixth time on page 2 itself, we really begin to wonder why he feels this is such a compelling argument. Maybe it's because it's the only one he has to sustain him through the rest of the book.
Here - for your edification if not your delight - are some quotes from his text:
"[We] need to treat those who disagree with us on such questions with complete intellectual respect, rather than dismissing them as liars, knaves and charlatans." [And where does Dawkins do that, might we ask?]
"Whereas Gould at least tries to weigh up the evidence, Dawkins simply offers the atheist equivalent of slick hellfire preaching, substituting turbocharged rhetoric and highly selective manipulation of facts for careful, evidence-based thinking."
"There's lots of pseudoscientific speculation".
"When I read The God Delusion I was both saddened and troubled. How, I wondered, could such a gifted popularizer of the natural sciences, who once had such a passionate concern for the objective analysis of evidence, turn into such an aggressive anti-religious propagandist, with an apparent disregard for evidence that was not favourable to his case? Why were the natural sciences beings so abused in an attempt to advance atheist fundamentalism?" (My emphasis.)
"While this embittered book is written with rhetorical passion and power, the stridency of its assertions merely masks tired, weak and recycled arguments."
"God is a delusion - a 'psychotic delinquent' invented by mad, deluded people. That's the take-home message of The God Delusion."
[On religious abuse of children:] "Having read the ludicrous misrepresentations of religion which are such a depressing feature of The God Delusion, I very much fear that secularists would merely force their own dogmas down the throats of the same gullible children."
"I do not wish to be unkind, but this whole approach sounds uncomfortably like the anti-religious programmes build into the education of Soviet children during the 1950s�"
"There is indeed a need for society to reflect on how it educates its children. Yet no case can be made for them to be force-fed Dawkins' favoured dogmas and distortions."
"The God Delusion, more by its failings than its achievements, reinforces the need for high-quality religious education in the public arena, countering the crude caricatures, prejudicial stereotypes and blatant misrepresentations now being aggressively peddled by atheist fundamentalism."
"One of the most characteristic features of Dawkins' anti-religious polemic is his presentation of the pathological as if it were normal, the fringe as if it were the centre, crackpots as if they were the mainstream. It generally works well for his intended audience, who can be assumed to know little about religion, and probably care for it even less. But it's not acceptable. And it's certainly not scientific."
"It's yet another wearisome example of the endless recycling of out-dated arguments that has become so characteristic of atheism in recent years."
"His inept engagement with Luther shows up how Dawkins abandons even the pretence of rigorous evidence-based scholarship."
"In this book, Dawkins throws the conventions of academic scholarship to the winds; he wants to write a work of propaganda, and consequently treats the accurate rendition of religion as an inconvenient impediment to his chief agenda, which is the intellectual and cultural destruction of religion. It's an unpleasant characteristic that he shares with other fundamentalists."
"There is no difficulty, for example, in believing that Darwin's theory of evolution is presently the best explanation of the available evidence; but that doesn't mean it is correct."
"This rambling pastiche is poorly structured, making it quite difficult to follow its basic argument".
"Dawkins' brash and simplistic arguments".
I should point out here that we have still only reached page 9 of this shamelessly bad book. I wish I could tell you that it improves as McGrath gets more into his stride, but it simply continues in the same vein throughout. I read this book in bed — it only took me an hour or so to get through it; but I then lay awake, seething with anger and indignation, until 5 o'clock in the morning! Not, I hasten to add before any Christians try to re-create the experience in their own image, because I disapprove of TGD being subjected to criticism and challenge, but because McGrath's attempt at it results in nothing more than an outpouring of smug, self-satisfied venom.
Actually, talking of smugness, a further, much needed source of mirth is provided by McGrath's blithely self-congratulatory tone: writing of a lecture he had given, he says, "The lecture had not been particularly remarkable. I had simply demonstrated, by rigorous use of scientific, historical and philosophical arguments, that Dawkins' intellectual case against God didn't stand up to critical examination." And further on he writes, "I was severely and quite properly critical of this pseudoscientific idea in Dawkins' God" , leaving the words "even if I do say so myself" echoing in the reader's mind if not actually written on the page. In the "For Further Reading" section at the back, McGrath recommends only one book on Christian belief, describing it as follows: "The most widely used textbook of Christian theology, which sets out what Christians believe and why, clearly and impartially, is: Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction" !)
Searching the book again, I chanced upon another example of McGrath's contemptible sophistry: "[Dawkins] is adamant that he himself, as a good atheist, would never, ever fly airplanes into skyscrapers, or commit any other outrageous act of violence or oppression. Good for him. Neither would I. Yet there are those in both our constituencies who would." Yes, humanists are rightly feared the world over for their tendency to commit mass murder in the name of tolerance and human welfare.
Like Wilson, McGrath doesn't scruple to take it upon himself to suggest that Dawkins might be "an atheist whose faith is faltering". And like Robertson, it is clear from what he writes that McGrath is aware that many of his readers will be Christians who have not read TGD — making his distortion of its contents all the more disgraceful.
This is a truly despicable book and a criminal waste of paper, ink and time. It is worse even than John Cornwell's — the only significant achievement to which this book can lay claim.
Did I mention that McGrath used to be an atheist, by the way?
Bibliography
Baggini, J., Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2003
Cornwell, J., Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Riposte to The God Delusion, Profile Books, 2007
Dawkins, R., The God Delusion, Black Swan, 2006
Harris, S., The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, The Free Press, 2005
Hawking, S., A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam Books, 1988
Hitchens, C., God is Not Great: The Case against Religion, Atlantic Books, 2007
Robertson, D., The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths, Christian Focus Publications, 2007
Stenger, V. J., God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, Prometheus Books, 2007
McGrath, A. with Collicutt McGrath, J., The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist fundamentalism and the denial of the divine, SPCK, 2007
Wilson, A., Deluded by Dawkins? A Christian Response to The God Delusion, Kingsway, 2007
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Source: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/2285
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